Where do we begin on letting our kitten roam outside?

We kept our two cats indoors for ten weeks.
Then we slowly started introducing them to getting outside, carrying them around the garden a bit.
Their first few trips out were not without problems though - the little one got lost down a laneway - so quite a bit of hunting by us to find her again - eventually found her crying walking up and down the laneway - swear I nearly heard her cheer when she spotted me in the distance.

Also keep in mind your neighbours - not everyone likes or tolerates cats. If they have outdoors cats then great. However if they do then get ready for the turf wars...
We recall ours by shaking their treat box - works 99% of the time - longest it has taken is 5 minutes.

In someways I would prefer to keep our two safe indoors - however since our dogs get to roam around the back garden it hardly seems fair - and since we have let them out the tom is alot happier in himself.

Best of luck - definitely go with the micro chipping - if you have a collar make sure it is one of the safety ones - last thing you want is the cat hanging itself. ON this point our tom lost 5 collars in less than 5 weeks - he is now collarless

It's really your choice. Have a look through this forum for indoor/outdoor cat debates there have been quite a few recently, some arguements are a bit petty but there have been a lot of very good points made from both sides. Basically every time you let your cat outside to roam freely there is absolutely no guarantee it will come back safely or at all.

There is an endless list of dangers including cars, traps and poisons intended for wild animals, your cat going up into the engine of a car, dogs attacking your cat, getting locked into neighbours sheds without food or water, attacks from other cats, falling down a drain pipe and drowning, cat-haters who have no qualms about leaving out poison, setting their dogs on your cat, kicking or hitting your cat, purposefully running over your cat or stealing your cat for baiting fighting dogs. I'v been on this forum and others for a while and through these and from my own first hand experience I have heard of each and every one of these things happening at least once so there not all rare once off occurences, they are real dangers. The annoying thing is you will hear loads of people say they have cats well into their teens who are allowed roam freely and have never so much as come home with a cut but you will also hear loads of people say they've had cats just not return home, and while you'd like to believe these cats just happened to move in with some little old dear who feeds them sliced ham and steak every day the reality is that they most likely met their end through one of the methods above.

You can decrease the likelihood of accidents through putting on a reflective collar, not letting them out at night and getting them neutered but really the only way to ensure safety is to either keep them indoors totally or with access to a specially built cat enclosure or garden with a cat-proof fence (google purrfect fence to get an idea of just one cat fence), you can also train them to walk on a harness and lead. Keeping cats indoors is starting to gain more popularity, there are quite a good number of owners who do already and I think in other countries (Parts of Australia and America I think?) it's more the norm. I let my first cat outside and he got killed on the road at the age of roughly 3, I keep my current cat indoors and she's 6.

If you do decide to let him outside then first let him outside before he's due a meal (or even skip a meal prior to it so that he's extra hungry) and call him back in by shaking his bag or tin of food after a few minutes. By ensuring that you always let him out before a meal then he won't stray too far if he's hungry and knows he's due food, also shaking his bag of food or tapping the side of a tin gives you a noise with which you can call him back in with.

Zapperzy wrote: »

Thats the law but it still happens, judging by the other thread some see no issue leaving antifreeze out for cats, and I know farmers who bait lamb carcasses or sausages with trodax or similar poison intended for dogs or foxes. Recently heard of 2 dogs poisoned in a similar fashion.

There are always a few rotten apples who engage in such illegal practices and thats why people should always be vigilante and report such activties to the Gardai or NPWS - however the vast majority of sheep farmers are law-abiding by dealing with vermin via shooting and trapping. Owners of dogs should never let them stray in rural areas as under the law, farmers are entitled to shoot dogs that are troubling livestock.

There's always the option for cat-proofing your garden or an area where your little monster can roam out in the fresh air in safety and there are fence additions that you can easily fix to existing fences. You just install them while you're there and take them down if you have to move without doing any more damage than a few screw holes.

Cats can, and do, live quite happily, and often longer lives, as indoor cats and although people claim that they want to get out and it's just their nature, this is not always the case.
If you close the door to a room in your house, they often want to get in there - just to see what's happening out of sheer curiosity and it tends to be the same thing with being outdoors.
We have four mainly indoor cats who are happy as larry to spend all their time indoors with free run of the house, more toys than Hamleys and several state-of-the-art climbing frames and scratching posts. They're warm, safe, comfortable and totally spoiled.
They love having us around chatting to them and spoiling them like good servants do but we decided that they looked so forlorn when we were out enjoying the occasional day of sunshine in the garden without them that we had to do something.
As we have an FIV+ boy, letting them all out wasn't an option and we couldn't keep Sully confined on his own as he's the most social of them all.
After a bit of research, we found a cat fence that suited our needs, ordered online and waited for delivery. It wasn't the cheapest option but once it arrived it was relatively simple to install and it just attached to the top of our existing garden fence. We then opened the door and waited for a response. They were initially wary of going out and only ventured out if we were with them. The fence was tested by our own little Harry Houdini, Genie, who can climb anything and get in and out of the most difficult places but even with her Olga Korbutt gymnastic skills, she couldn't get the better of it. Result!

We've had it for almost three years now and it's as good and reliable as it was on day one. The cats now go in the garden any time they like, once the door is open. Usually they don't bother unless we go out and we've found that when we come in again, the novelty wears off for them and they all come racing in, just in case they'd miss something inside.
When they are out, we don't have to worry about them being injured or lost or poisoned or hit by a car or any of the other horrible things that can so easily happen to cats.

Sometimes I'll see one or two of them sitting on a window sill chattering at birds but if I go and open the door for them to give chase but don't actually go out, they just look at me as if I'm crazy and walk away.

If there are other cats in the area who come in your garden there's always a risk in letting your little man out. The local area will be considered to be the other cats' territory and your boy will be an interloper and is at risk of an attack from any one or more of them. He may go on to win many battles and become king of the area but he may also sustain some pretty nasty injuries in the process.
I know it's up to each individual owner as to how they keep their cats and whether they let them roam but please weigh up the pro's and con's very carefully before you finally make that decision.
It doesn't take them long to worm their way into your affections and stake a claim on your heart and the fewer times you have to spend sleepless nights worrying about them, the better.